Embodiments of the invention relate generally to retrieving information from an information source and more particularly to navigating and searching information in an information source which includes embedded links.
An information source may include, for example, electronic files, electronic documents, electronic mail, and instant messenger and may contain various forms of information including text, graphics, audio, video, hyperlink and the like. A hyperlink is a user interface embedded in the information source that may guide a user to other related information sources on demand. Hypermedia, a term derived from hypertext, extends the notion of the hypertext to include links among any set of multimedia objects, including sound, motion video, and virtual reality. It can also connote a higher level of user/network interactivity than the interactivity already implicit in hypertext.
An information source, for example, an electronic document may be searched for relevant information desired by a user. There exist multiple utilities and applications involving a process of document searching in various software applications such as email client software, instant messaging client software, text processing software and the like.
Conventionally, searching relevant information from an information source, for example an electronic document is done by navigating through information content of the electronic document. During navigation, a link embedded in the electronic document is processed as a normal content without considering the attributes of the link. Therefore, the search result corresponding to the information content of the document is very limited. Moreover, if the electronic document lacks a directly matching content for a given search query, the search would give a null result.
The embedded links in the electronic document may contain relevant information such as a directly matching content for the given search query. The information content of an electronic document directed by the hypermedia link may be of significant relevance. Therefore, neglecting this important source of relevant information may cause a user to miss significant information.
Therefore, there exists a need for providing an improved searching mechanism for searching relevant information content of information sources and for providing improved quality search results.